The Indian Mars Mission, Mangalyaan, which is scheduled to take off next year, will be completely indigenous. “There won’t be any foreign involvement in Mangalyaan. The `450-crore project will carry 24 kg of payload experiments — cameras and sensors to record fluorescent spectra, methane emissions, atmosphere studies etc. If the mission does not take off next November, it will take until 2016 to reach that favourable distance from Mars again,” said Prof. U.R. Rao, former Isro chairman, who is actively involved in the project.
The Mangalyaan will take nearly eight months to reach Mars, from where it will continuously send important data. The probe will revolve around the red planet with an apogee (farthest orbital point) of nearly 80,000 km and a perigee (nearest orbital point) of 500 km. Meanwhile, when the Isro workhorse, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, blasts off next Sunday, space scientists will have many reasons to celebrate, including one that will set the cash registers ringing. The Indian space agency will rake in more than $20 million for hoisting two foreign satellites — SPOT-6 of France and Proiteres of Japan — into space. The 720-kg advanced remote sensing satellite manufactured by ASTRIUM SAS of France will be the heaviest foreign satellite to be transported into space by PSLV from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota.